For my CEP 811 class, I'm to look over various forms of online learning found in the Michigan Guideline for Online Teaching and discuss which ones may be useful to my students and peers. While the list itself is both daunting and exciting, I chose to discuss one that I have the most familiarity (keep in mind that I'm by no means an expert on this): WebQuests.
If you are curious about WebQuests, you can find a LOT of great information here. These are a great tool for not only explicit instruction, but also enriching classroom instruction by giving students a chance to take what they learn and build on that base to learn something new. It's also a very wide-open tool which can be written and applied to many different learning styles and abilities. Aside from that, there are two aspects that make WebQuests accessible to most teachers in a classroom setting: it's free and easy. With some research and a little time, every teacher can do a WebQuest to help their students! My first attempt at writing a WebQuest myself is a study S. E. Hinton and here works. This employs a lot of visual learning and critical thinking skills to discover similarities and themes across her different works. I may tweak it some before I assign it to my students, but the original version of it is here. Please take a look at it and let me know what you think.
Now on to a technology which I think would be harder to implement and use. While it's almost impossible to argue its usefulness and necessity, I'm sticking with "harder to use" here and sayt Assistive Technologies and Devices along with Universal Design for Learning. Again, I cannot stress enough how useful this can be, but most teachers have very little to say about how their districts allocate money. These devices can be very pricey and it may be hard to justify equipping a population of students with these tools when only a few students (if any) are legally required to have them under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's a shame, but we often have to blend "what should be" with "what is."
Hi Lenny ~ I appreciate WebQuests for some of the same reasons you do - flexibility. I love the project/problem/inquiry based learning aspects they bring into the classroom, especially with the advent of the Common Core - where students are expected to demonstrate more than mastery of the material. They are expected to transform. Assistive technologies are expensive, but they can be acquired through your local RESD/ISD if the student has an IEP and documented need. Bookshare (https://www.bookshare.org/) can be used by anyone with a VI, LD or OHI diagnosis for free - all you have to do is follow their sign up process. Gra
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